The Great and Narrow Divide
by Maggi Lynn
Summary: Someone has found a way to bring Gideon back from the dead. And the Charmed Ones aren't too happy about it.
1. Chapter One

**The Great and Narrow Divide**

**Chapter One**

Catherine Ansen sat back at her desk, surveying her essay on demonic possession. It wasn't going to be the longest in the class, but she wasn't going for simply quantity, after all. Trying her best wasn't just an option, anymore; it was a necessity. Witches like her needed to prove their worth, as well as the worth of Magic School. With Gideon gone, the very future of the school - as well as that of the students and magical beings that resided within the school – hung in the balance...

Catie shook her head angrily and crossed out one word on her paper, replacing it with another. She couldn't think about Gideon. Not right now, at least. She had set aside special time to deal with the former headmaster of Magic School. Everything had to be calculated, planned out, or there would be serious consequences, indeed.

She was interrupted by a knock at the door, followed by a youthful, feminine voice. "Cate? Hun, there are... People. Out in the main hall. They want to talk to you."

"I don't feel like talking," Catie declared stubbornly, glaring at the door as if she could see who was behind it. It had only been a month since Gideon's death, and Catie was still supposed to be "in mourning."

"What the heck am I supposed to tell them, then?"

"Tell them..." Catherine hobbled weakly to the door and opened it a crack to peer out at the familiar face watching her. "Tell them I don't feel well. It's the truth, isn't it?"

Mena looked at her friend as though Cate had sprouted wings through her long, straight, amber-colored hair. "I can't tell them that."

Catie was getting annoyed, now. "Well, why the hell not?"

"Because," Mena told her, equally perturbed, "they're the Charmed Ones."

* * *

"Have a seat," Piper told the unusually tall female in front of her. She watched carefully as the girl – she couldn't have been more than eighteen or so, despite her height – quietly dropped into a chair across from the sisters.

"So, Catie, huh?" Paige questioned, raising a currently brown eyebrow.

"Yes. With a 'C'" Cate told them in a small voice.

"How old are you?" Phoebe asked. "Eighteen? Nineteen?"

"I'll be twenty in a month." Catie didn't like the sudden rush of questions, but wasn't sure how to stop the Charmed Ones from asking them.

Paige was quick to continue the onslaught. "Twenty, eh? A bit old to still be in Magic School, isn't it?"

"I want to teach here," Cate said solidly. "I was supposed to take my teaching exams a week ago, but Gideon..."

"Yeah, speaking of Gideon..."

So that was it. They wanted to talk to her about Gideon. Cate sat there, tightlipped, eyes narrowed. "I'd rather not speak of him, if you don't mind."

"Oh, we do mind," Piper spoke up, a hint of fury in her voice. "He killed my son."

"If what the school's heard is true, you have both your sons, safe and sound, Miss Halliwell." Cate knew all about what Gideon had done to Piper's children; killing one and nearly missing the other. Realizing what she had said came out as quite insensitive, she added, "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have said – there's nothing I can do, anyway. I don't understand why you wanted to talk to me."

Phoebe took a deep breath and leaned forward in her chair. "You and Gideon were close."

"Not in this lifetime."

Paige almost giggled, and Piper rolled her eyes. Phoebe just continued. "I'll take that as a 'no,' then."

Cate folded her hands in her lap and let her gaze rest on them. "He didn't – we didn't really chat it up when he was around, no."

"So you wouldn't have any idea what's going on, now."

"What?" Cate's eyes widened. "What's going on?"

"We're not sure," Paige confided. "That's the problem. We heard from a reliable source that Gideon wasn't... Where he was supposed to be."

"Hold up. Wait a second," Piper interjected. "Are you sure we should be telling her all this? What if she _is_ involved?"

"I'm not getting any sense of lying," Phoebe told them, sternly.

"Hello, dummy, you don't have your power of empathy anymore, remember?"

"Rub it in. Thank you."

"I don't know anything."

The three sisters turned to look at Cate. "You don't?" Paige asked in confirmation.

"Not a thing." Cate said a silent prayer that they believed her. "I'm sorry."

They had barely heard her when Paige came up with another theory. "Maybe he's crossing over or something. You know, fully to 'the other side.'"

"No, you know what Leo said: he got some clear readings that a dead Elder was crossing _back_ into the earthly realm." Piper looked toward Cate. "It's almost definitely Gideon."

"Well, who's to say someone's helping him?" Phoebe asked.

Piper sighed. "We've been through this. If he came back, he'd be weakened. There's no way he could enter this plane on his own."

"So, why would you be asking me about it?" Cate inquired. "Like I said, I didn't even really know who he was."

It was almost as if she'd been ignored. "Are you sure you got it right?" Phoebe asked her sister.

Paige shook her head, confused. "Yes, yes; I knew what the hell I was doing. She's who the spell pointed to."

"That doesn't make any sense."

"Well, maybe _you_ should have done the damn spell, then!"

Catie couldn't take much more of this. "Listen, I really have to be going."

"Wait, just a second."

"Piper, there's no reason for us to keep her if she has nothing to do with it." Phoebe gathered her things and stood as Catie did. "We're really sorry for the inconvenience."

Catie informed them that it was no trouble at all, just to be polite, and left under the scrutinizing gaze Piper shot in her direction. As she rounded the corner and entered the school's main corridor, she still heard the voices of the Charmed Ones.

"Why would a spell go wrong?"

"How should I know? But it wouldn't be the first time it's happened."

"Come on, we have to get back to the house. Leo might be trying to contact us."

* * *

Cate stumbled as quickly as she could to her room, deep in contemplation. Was Leo in hiding? Served him right if he was. What Gideon had done was inexcusable, but there were good intentions behind it. Leo's revenge was plain reckless and hardly associated itself with the goodness he was supposed to stand for.

She closed the heavy wooden door behind her, and muttered a silencing spell to soundproof the room. Every word, every action she knew by heart – after all, she'd been performing them for an entire month.

Candles were carefully placed in a circle and lighted. Catie knelt in the middle, her expression betraying the excitement she felt within. If all went well, this would be the last time she'd have to perform the spell.

Slowly, whisper-quiet, she began to speak.

"Hear my words, departed lover  
Appear to me and no other  
I lend you strength as time you bide  
Cross now the great divide."

Sitting back on her heels, Catherine watched as mist swirled up out of the air and thickened until she could no longer see the room in front of her. It took a few seconds, but at long last, Gideon's head appeared.

She smiled.


	2. Chapter Two

**Chapter Two**

"I, for one, don't believe a word she says," an exhausted Piper disclosed to her estranged (and currently well-protected by a series of spells placed upon him by the Charmed Ones) husband.

"The spell went along without a hitch," Paige told everyone for the gazillionth time (which Phoebe was sure to remind them). "I just don't understand why it didn't work."

"You're going to have to question someone around her," Leo told them. "Someone she knows; is close to."

"We tried," Phoebe said wearily. "She has a bunch of friends, but none of them are extremely close to her. They know nothing."

Paige interrupted. "But they did let us in on one thing: she was the first one to know that Gideon was dead. And she's been seriously grieving ever since."

"Is she tall?"

"What?"

Leo paced the room, frustrated but seemingly on to something. "Just work with me here."

"She was tall." Piper said, baffled. "How did you know?"

"How tall?"

"I don't know, about 5'10" or so. Made me feel like a midget." Piper almost smiled.

Paige shook her head in confusion. "I don't get it, Leo; clue us in, here."

Leo stopped his pacing. "I think I know what she's doing."

* * *

So much for a tearful embrace and whispers of promised love and devotion.

Instead, Catherine was half-asleep on her bed (at least he'd carried her there when she'd collapsed), while her newly-revived lover paced the floor in a fashion similar to that of the very man who had murdered him.

Unlike Leo, however, Gideon wasn't one for lively chitchat. When he spoke, one tended to listen, because whatever he said was of importance and worth listening to. In addition, he didn't care for publicizing his deepest thoughts for the world to hear. But the world wasn't in the (cleverly soundproofed) room with them; only Cate was there – _his_ world. He stopped to stare at the young woman who'd helped him return, hardly mobile on the bed. She was desperately trying to keep her eyes open, in hopes that he would acknowledge her presence and profess his undying love to her. Stranger things have happened, Cate reasoned as she fought to stay awake. Had she passed out when he first crossed completely over? Most of her strength had been ceded to him through the spell. Had he told her, then, that he loved her, when her ears weren't working? He'd praised her for her focus and resilience, and for so cleverly modifying a spell that would usually have killed the one who performed it. He'd even scolded her for not being more careful about how much of herself she put into it: at times when the spell was performed, she hardly had the strength to talk to him. But not once had he actually told her he loved her. Oh, she knew he did – the spell wouldn't have worked if he didn't – but it would have been nice to hear it.

Just as she thought it, Gideon spoke. "There is not much time. My presence must have been pinpointed by now; I'm certain of it. Once I am found, I'll most likely be held somewhere and put on trial. You mustn't say anything of my being here, Catherine." He hadn't spoken her name often on purpose, but when he had, it rolled off his tongue the same way it had two hundred years ago.

"The –"She was regaining the use of her mouth. "The Charmed Ones."

"Yes, they will, in all certainty, be leading the crusade for my capture. Do not let yourself be discovered, or they will be after you, as well."

"Gideon," she told him quietly, "I think they already know."

* * *

"And I thought I knew every magical thing there was to know," Paige admitted, still not completely understanding what was going on.

Phoebe echoed the sentiment. "Bringing people back from the dead is impossible, Leo, or we would have done it for Prue."

Leo sighed wearily. "For people, yes, but not for whitelighters and elders. When they at first cross over, they are not in the same plane as a mortal or witch would be. While they're there, it's possible to bring them back, but there are numerous conditions that make that relatively impossible, too."

"But there is a possibility," Piper said, sternly. "So you're saying that Gideon _is_ crossing back over? I don't get it."

"Neither do I. The one spell I can see takes a month to complete –"

"Which is how long it's been," Paige said, "so that part makes sense."

"Yes, but what doesn't is that the girl who is supposedly performing it had enough strength to talk to you."

Piper's eyes narrowed. "What do you mean?"

Leo met her gaze. "Usually they are so weak by the end that they can hardly do anything. The spell drains them of all their strength, giving it over to the person to be revived. At the end, they die."

"How do we know she's the one who did the spell?" Phoebe asked. "I mean, Paige could have gotten the spell wrong –"

"HEY!"

"-Or maybe there are two people doing it, here."

Leo shook his head. "That isn't possible. There'd be too much energy flying around, even regarding relatively powerless witches."

Piper spoke up. "Wait. I remember her stumbling into the room. She _had_ been weakened. Leo, is there some way she could have tapped into a power from somewhere else to keep herself alive?"

"I think so," Leo confirmed. "And if it's what I think it is, we may be taking on something bigger than we'd imagined.


	3. Chapter Three

**Chapter Three**

"Tell me again, what they said to you."

Cate yawned and tried again to sit up in the bed, but Gideon gave her shoulder a light shove, causing her to drop back into the pillows. "They said they got some signs that you were coming back. They asked me if I knew anything about it. They said they knew we were close, when you were alive."

"And what did you say to them, Catherine?"

"I told them, not in this lifetime," she told him with a small smile.

An amused expression appeared on his face. It was a lovely play on words, and he was proud of her. Suddenly, he frowned. "I'm being summoned."

"You can't leave yet," Cate declared, visibly upset despite her obvious fatigue.

"I must. This is more than I'd bargained for, Catherine." He'd forgotten how much he'd missed the simple pleasure of stating her name. "I was expecting to be retrieved by the Elders, physically. The pure fact that they trust me to deliver myself says a lot."

"You don't have any powers, anymore."

"Apparently, I still have the power to transport myself. And communicate with the Elders." Then, after a moment's pause, "Can you stand?"

Catie blinked a few times, wishing she wasn't so exhausted. "Probably. But you told me to stay here."

He appreciated her loyalty and obedience, and told her so with a gentle squeeze of his hand over hers. "The Elders have something else in mind."

* * *

"Transcendal WHAT?" Paige asked, still confused, as they all sat around the dining room table. 

"Love." Leo replied for the fourth time, now. "It's not that difficult to understand, really. Simple. It's a bond between two individuals –"

"That transcends lifetimes, yes, we know," Piper said, trying to calm down Baby Chris, who was waiting (not very patiently) to be fed.

"What I don't get is why we can't just stop it," Phoebe put in. "I mean, we're the Charmed Ones, for crying out loud."

"Yeah, doesn't that count for something?"

"Of course it does," Leo answered. "But in this case, there's almost two hundred years of devotion between them. It's not at all common, and if they are in any way magical, it just makes the bond even more powerful."

"So nothing can break their bond," Piper said, exchanging a brief heartfelt glance with Leo.

Leo shook his head slowly. "Not even death."

Paige broke the moment with an exasperated, "WOW. So what the heck are we supposed to do?"  
Phoebe rested her chin in her hand, then quickly sat up. "Wait just a second, here. Love. That's good, right? I mean, it's love."

"There is only goodness in Trancendal Love, yes."

"So it can't really do anything bad, can it?"

Leo sighed. "Ideally, no. But it contains a lot of power, and even the Charmed Ones are capable of magic that is less than good."

"So you're saying that Gideon could use this to his advantage?"

Piper clutched her baby to her chest and quickly stood up to retrieve her older son. "He is NOT coming for Wyatt."

"It's okay, sweetie," Phoebe said soothingly, trying to comfort her sister and get her to sit back down. "Nothing's going to happen to Wyatt, we promise."

"How do you know all about this, Leo?" Paige questioned. "I mean, about Catherine Ansen and her connection to Gideon."

"Gideon was once my mentor, as you know," Leo explained, "and we talked a few times about how we became whitelighters."

"Gideon was once a whitelighter?"

"Yes, but that was more than one hundred years ago. When I met him, he was already an Elder. He told me some things about the life he had before he became a whitelighter. Needless to say, Catherine was in it. She was his wife."

"Yeah, but her name wasn't Catherine back then, was it?"

"No, actually, it was," Leo said. "In this life, she is apparently reincarnated as one of her descendants. Not a direct one, but her maiden name must have survived until now, and it's the same as it was two hundred years ago." Then, as an afterthought, "Oftentimes reincarnation stays within family lines. You three have firsthand experience, you know that."

"How long were they married?"

"Two years," Leo told them. "She died suddenly. That's all I really know. Except that she's obviously aware of her past life now, or this entire thing wouldn't have even happened."

"Whoa. Okay," Paige said, trying to get her bearings, "they were married in a past life. But what I can't understand is how many coincidences it must have taken to bring them both together. I mean, what are the odds that she's a witch and he's an Elder?"

"There was always magical blood running through Catherine's family," Leo told them. "She wasn't a witch when she met Gideon, however."

"Okay, okay." Phoebe said, not wanting to hear any more. "I don't care about the how and the why. All I care about is what we can do now to stop them."

Leo looked over at a very rigid Piper. "I'm going to have to talk with the other Elders."

* * *


End file.
